


After the War

by raleighpuppy



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 16:16:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1785388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raleighpuppy/pseuds/raleighpuppy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Herc can't get a grip. After all, he's lost yet another co-pilot, and the world has no use for lone jaeger pilots anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the War

     Chuck knew his dad was sick, most likely from opening and reopening his headspace to so many people so many times. Chuck would die before he drifted with anyone other than his old man because he'd seen the cycle, what happened to Herc every time. They'd be drift compatible, they'd become friends, they'd fight together, the other pilot would die and his dad would live, and Herc would get worse. But Herc had to let them in to kill kaiju. After all, Scott wasn't much help and Chuck was too young.

     Sometimes he didn't know who he was and would wake up from someone else's nightmares. Sometimes he found himself scared of things he knew he wasn't scared of. For example, a couple nights ago, he woke up crying after a dream involving heights. Herc wasn't afraid of heights, or was he? He'd become worse and worse at distinguishing his dreams and fears from others'.

     Sometimes he'd stay in bed all day because it was to hurt too much to move. Breathing hurt when parts of your mind were gone. Sometimes he'd think he was Scott and say something completely out of character. Mostly, he was just quiet and scared and sick. And Chuck hated it.

     Chuck would get little bits of this through the drift. He'd sometimes find himself thinking about the people his dad had drifted with, as if he knew them too. He'd wonder how they were doing, and then realize they were all dead. Everyone his dad had drifted with was now dead. Except for him.

But that didn't last too long.

     Herc felt Chuck go out. Felt the anger overflowing, and then acceptance, and then nothing. He'd felt nothing to many times, after each of his co-pilot's deaths. Even Scott, as he died miles and miles away in the United States years after being discharged, years after the last time they'd spoken. Herc had broken down during a meeting when Scott died because something in his headspace died out too.

     This was worse because nothing happened at first, but later it would seep in little by little, killing him slowly until coming to an end on a beach in the middle of the night. He felt nothing, and then a weird fuzziness, and Herc started to wonder if he were the dead one because he was so cold and everything felt far away. He spoke into the microphone, but could barely hear his words over the nothing. His mouth felt so heavy. It didn't feel like he was in control of anything, really. He needed something solid, so he latched onto a desk and stayed there in silence. After he felt grounded enough to move, he slowly made his way back to his room, hoping Max would follow.

     After the war, Herc left. Mako and Raleigh moved in together. Last Herc heard, they were engaged. He asked them to keep Max, and left. He didn't tell anyone where he was going because he never wanted to be found again. It was too much for him because people kept leaving and dying, and he didn't want to be there when it all went wrong.

     He couldn't stop moving from city to city. He stayed in hotel rooms. He'd pick up books, read them, and then leave them in airports or trains or wherever else he was, and hope someone else picked it up and enjoyed it as much as he did. Books were an excuse to forget who and where he was. If he liked something a lot, he'd mail it to Mako and Raleigh, who he visited once a year during the holidays.

     A big part of his headspace was missing, damaged, and it hurt a lot some days to see families together because the kids always made him think of Chuck. Every bulldog he saw was Max. And he even swore he saw someone who looked like Angela, and his broke his heart. Breakdowns like the one when Scott died became more common. It was a blessing none had happened in public yet. The last thing he needed was to be hospitalized when all he was trying to do was escape.

     One night, his heart was pounding in his ears and it sounded like the ocean. He'd always been scared of the ocean, even as a boy. It was too big and too deep, and there was something wrong about that. It couldn't be right for something to be that vast and unknown. To a scrappy kid who was terrified of never leaving Australia his entire life, the ocean was awful. He found himself at the beach, up to his ankles in the water.

     And he thought of the time he'd been forced by a judge to spend a summer with his father, who'd left his mum behind with two boys to raise, and he'd wanted to die. There was a big lake near the house, and he ran out into it in the middle of the night. Scott had followed him out, and nearly had to pay witness to his older brother attempting to drown himself. Scott had saved him and Herc hated him for a very long time.

Now, there was no one to stop him and he felt the ocean was a fitting place for someone like him to die.

Mako and Raleigh never received another book from Herc.

Herc didn't visit Mako and Raleigh next Christmas.

    

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so sorry for this


End file.
